Hello readers of Larry's Sea Pearl Boats site! Here is an update of our voyage now that we are half way down the Belize coast.

Upon reaching Belize we sailed to Corozal, in a big bay on the Mexican border. Then we sailed back out to the cayes (Belizean for islands, pronounced “keys�). We got married at Caye Caulker! A lot of friends and family arrived and spent 10 days with us. After they all left we spent another couple weeks repairing and modifying the boat. For example, we made a sun cover for dinghy, mounted our handheldGPS where we could see when we’re sailing, and painted the cabin top white so it wouldn’t get so hot inside. Then we provisioned for a major side trip: Turneffe Reef and Lighthouse Reef.

A hard day’s beating into the wind took us beyond the horizon to Turneffe Reef, a thirty-mile-long galaxy of mangrove islands  and lagoons encased in an oval-shaped barrier reef. Like Chinchorro,  Lighthouse, and Glover Reefs, it is an atoll. We worked our way up to the west side  of the atoll, swimming in the clear water over the coral heads and anchoring in protected waters at night. When storms hit, which is common this time of year, we holed up in whatever shelter we could find and waited before  moving on.

From the northern tip of Turneffe we sailed another twenty miles east to Lighthouse Reef. We anchored off an island at the south end and swam along the wall where that reef drops off. It goes straight down for hundreds of feet! Then we sailed up to the Blue Hole, a round limestone cave in the middle of the reef.  The hole is an aperture in the roof of a flooded cavern over 400 feet deep! Its rim is a couple feet under water. We entered the hole through a cut and tied to a buoy. Without SCUBA tanks we couldn’t dive very deep, but we swam the hole’s perfectly round circumference.

Most of the people we saw at the reefs were lobster divers. They use gaff-rigged wooden sloops built in the village of Sarteneja, near Corozal. Each Sarteneja boat packs in ten or so young men. Each diver has a tiny dugout canoe. He paddles to a rock under which he thinks lobster might be hiding then ties a line from the canoe around his waist and dives in. They especially congregate at Sandbore Caye, at the northern tip of Lighthouse Reef. The place has great reefs around it: massive corals of all kinds piled together in mind-boggling formations.
 

Lighthouse Reef is similar to Chinchorro Bank in that it is mostly shallow water with a few small islands. In addition to the barrier reef all around, the enclosed lagoon contains hundreds of “patch reefs.� As at Chinchorro the patch reefs grow from a typical depth of twenty feet. But whereas the Chinchorro patches have plenty of water over them, those inside Lighthouse Reef grow to within inches of the surface. This makes them hazardous. Thurston draws less than a foot, but that’s enough for those rocks to scratch her. Once we sailed up onto a patch reef, got stuck, and had to fend ourselves off. We learned to only navigate such areas when the sun is high and the sky clear, in which case they show up as a chocolate brown surrounded by turquoise.

After a week on Lighthouse Reef we sailed back to Turneffe Reef, appreciating now a major distinction. Turneffe is different from Chinchorro and Lighthouse in that its interior consists mostly of mangrove and soft-bottom, non-coralized lagoons. We got around via these shallow, inter-connected waterways. But all three atolls are alike in that their eastern barriers are broad, shallow reefs with occasional exposed rock. Swimming on the east side is best where the barrier is pierced by a cut, allowing one to access the depths within the cut and to seaward. The three are also alike in that their western barriers are usually about ten feet deep, so you can swim or boat over them at will, and, once you reach the edge the bottom drops off steeply! The great wall dives seem to be on the west sides. Visibility was usually a respectable sixty or seventy feet. We saw some things what were strange and new to us. For example, a large, bright orange “caterpillar� (probably a sea slug) that crawls about on the coral looking for things to eat. And little fishes with clear bodies and yellow heads that pop up out of holes then go back in, tail first! We cruised to the south tip of Turneffe Reef then back to the mainland for provisions.

On August 10 we sailed into the narrow harbor in downtown Belize City. The city is built around Haulover Creek, one of the mouths of the Belize River. Here, just downstream of the Swing Bridge, so named because it swings open horizontally, poles have been driven into the river bottom. The Sarteneja boats tie bow and stern to these poles. We tied up where there was a vacancy and pumped up the dinghy. Thus began four days in that Belize much-maligned largest city.

We were in its mostly bustling quarter. Some rough characters congregate by the Swing Bridge. Beggars hit on us. Would-be guides and con men hit on us. Little boys pelted us from shore with fish guts and rocks! We hid inside the cabin until they drifted off. Fleeing the wrath of a ten-year-old boy, how humiliating!

From Belize City our pattern will be three loops out to the barrier reef, then south along it from island to island, then back to a mainland town for provisions. The provisioning towns will be Dangriga (where we now are), Placencia, and Punta Gorda. We have only three weeks of visa left for Belize, so we need to make progress toward Guatemala.  We’re in fine trim from all our swimming, walking, and rowing.
 

Steve and Ginny, Dangriga (Stann Creek), Belize, 8/20/10